


Love What Is

by mamie_eisenhower



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:00:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21674884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamie_eisenhower/pseuds/mamie_eisenhower
Summary: His voice took on an earnest tinge he refused to be ashamed of. “I can already tell marrying you is the best decision I’ve ever made.”Chasten’s cheeks flushed to a pretty pink, and Pete could tell he bit his tongue before he kissed him softly on the lips, replying, “Don’t tell that to the Smart Sewer people, babe.”* * *Or, I invent a tragedy and exploit it shamelessly.
Relationships: Chasten Buttigieg/Pete Buttigieg
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	Love What Is

**March 26, 2018**

**South Bend, Indiana**

Chasten hadn't heard the car pull up; and it seemed neither had the dogs, who lay, one atop the other, on the living room couch. Their evening lethargy had been frivolous in the face of his unrest over the letter. But now, he watched Buddy's eye pop open vigilantly, watched him hop his piglet-hop down the sofa and trot over to the door, panting eagerly as the crackle of boots on fallen leaves got louder. Watched him jump up Peter's leg when he finally entered.

  
There were still deep crinkles at the edges of his fiancé’s eyes when he approached him and dropped a quick kiss on his cheek.

"How did those kids treat you today, love?" he asked, his hand searching its resting place between Chasten's shoulder blades.

Chasten chose not to answer. The persistent thought of the letter curbed any energy for small talk. "You smell of night sky,” he said, a bit accusingly, instead. "And I want to point out you haven't smelled of afternoon, or even evening sky for that matter, in quite some time."

Peter's eyebrows shot up. "I'm sorry, love, but --"

He was cut short by Chasten breaking their embrace and turning over to the table, where the letter rested. Gingerly, as if not to stir any of its fateful contents, he lifted it up and handed it over. "It's from the agency."

They had settled down next to each other, wordlessly, on the sofa before Peter finally broke the silence. Eyes trained firmly on the envelope, he carefully enunciated, "I think -- I think it's important we both be very, very careful with seeing any -- anything that's in there as something with more weight than it has. I know what you want it to say, and I do too -- but it's not like it's a sign or something if it doesn't say that -- right?"

Chasten, who now felt his fiancé’s asking gaze burn on his face, could only swallow and nod. "Geez", he finally responded, tinting his tone with an amusement that he knew Peter knew was false, "Now I know what election night feels like for you guys."

The half-smile this earned him finally pushed him over the edge, and he reached for the letter opener impatiently.  
  
It took very little time for their eyes to find the words "regret" and "not at this time". The Times New Roman lettering burned tiny bureaucratic holes into the paper, which really was too cheap a quality for the grave message it carried, Chasten registered himself absent-mindedly thinking.

Through the torrent of his own emotions working their way into tailspin, he watched Peter inhale sharply through the nose. As if in slow motion, he saw his Adam’s apple bob, saw the tell-tale flicker of his pupils, and how his shirt-clad shoulders firmed up against the couch. Deep inside of him, something ached with longing. A tear escaped behind his glasses.

"So --" he started off, but realized that what had to be said had been said in the letter.  
The single word he’d uttered dangled there for a long time.

It was still only half past nine, but in unspoken agreement they had gone upstairs -- was Peter's walk more hunched than usual? -- and brushed their teeth. Their pale faces in the mirror matched the silence of the house, a silence that at once was eerie. 

Minutes later, in bed, Peter's back resting against his own chest and stomach like this was any other night, he willed himself to at least believe to be drifting off, when Peter opened his mouth again. "You know, " he said, his voice strangely tinny as if far removed, "maybe it isn't all bad.”

Chasten breathed heavily. Blood rushed to his head. He wasn't tired anymore. Through gritted teeth he whispered, then half-shouted, bolting up in a swift motion that knocked his elbow against the headboard: "What do you mean? Do you mean that you had second thoughts all along and chose to -- chose _not_ to tell me? " And before he could stop himself, “Or is it the President thing?”

Though Peter's eyes were out of view, he could imagine by the flinching of the moonlit muscles in his neck the look that had to fill them. Hurt. Confusion. Peter's gaze had never been as impenetrable as either his office or his equanimous nature called for. But when he finally turned to lay on his back, he stared blankly at the ceiling. A flat monotone emerged, his lips barely moving. "I'm sorry, Chasten. It's just been a lot, this past year."

It had been. And even after the DNC race it had sometimes felt as if one health scare concerning either of their parents was chasing the next, as if going days and weeks on end without a few hours of shared solitude at home together was how things would always be, as if every one of Peter’s weekends for the rest of their lives was destined to be eaten up by some State Democratic Dinner or other since the New York Times profile. But on the other hand -- every single year a mayor, _a mayor like Peter_ , lived was a lot. And every single year would be, wherever his career would take him.

Chasten tried in vain to veil the incredulity in his tone when he asked, still sat rod-straight against the headboard, “Yes it has been. But you knew that, and I knew that.” His voice slightly hitched, taking on the manic tinge he so detested. “Tell me what this is really about.”

“You know you shouldn’t read too much into my nightly rambles,” Peter tried to assuage. It was evident he hadn’t counted on the reaction his words had provoked. “I just -- I guess I wanted to find a silver lining.”

Chasten looked down on him. Peter appeared aged in the dim strips of sodium streetlight the lattices before the window painted on his face. The faintest of lines, finely spun, almost imperceptible in the way a spider’s web is before a single ray of sun hits it and makes it glisten, were grooving into his cheeks and forehead.  
His rage had evaporated, he observed, and moved his hand to lay on Peter’s bare rib cage to feel the heaving of his chest.  
“You _know_ ,” he said, as earnestly as he had said anything in his life, “You _know_ you are going to make the greatest father.”

If there was a hint of doubt in Peter’s response, Chasten chose to ignore it. Instead he scooted down again, and dropped a kiss as light as a feather on Peter’s shoulder, and slung his arms around his midsection. The steady beating of his heart rocked him to sleep. 

***

**April 9, 2018**

**County City Building, South Bend, Indiana**

The conference call with some of the Councilmembers in the morning had to be categorized as a disaster of at least medium scale, there was no getting around it. Still no moving funds to the stable housing project for the homeless, still no progress on zoning. He felt as if he was at his wit’s end. And now his computer was rebooting seemingly without reason. Pete rose from behind his cramped desk, rolling his shoulders. His tolerance was building up again after Lent, and it was time for another cup of coffee. 

Mug in hand, he had just gotten into some light banter with Kareemah to alleviate his mood -- the woman was a true phenom -- when he heard the elevator door open and turned, surprised at the unannounced visitor. 

It was Chasten. An ashen-faced, dishevelled Chasten who moved bent-over, like he had to keep himself from throwing up. A Chasten whose cheeks were tear-streaked. 

Pete heard the mug shatter behind him as he strode up to his fiancé as quickly as his legs allowed him to. Suddenly, they were shaking. 

“Is it your parents? My parents?”, he managed, enveloping him in a hug, secretly thankful he had something to hold onto. Chasten clung to him like he was a lifesaver, his fingers curling into Pete’s back. For an awful, long, long while there wasn’t an answer, just the panicked wheezing of his breath that tore at Pete’s drumming heart with every passing second.

Finally, Chasten managed to pull away. His voice, the color of honey on most days, was of a tear-soaked blue. “It’s -- it’s Dustin. Dustin and his wife.” As Peter felt the color drain from his features, he added, “Turn on the TV.”

The anchor’s knuckles were white as snow because she clutched her notecards so tightly. CNN reported 172 passengers and crew missing, presumed dead, as flight AA8017 had crashed into a Colorado mountain range on its way from O’Hare to LAX. No indication of a terrorist incident. Just the cruel dictatorship of chance that had left two children as orphans and curtailed two entwined lives.

“Dad called me,” Chasten said, his gaze far off into a land whose customs and traditions Pete had no understanding of. “He seemed like he was holding up alright, considering. But then --”, his voice broke, “then I heard Mom just -- just scream in agony. She had locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out.”

Chasten had left school in a hurry, and now Pete, too, just ripped his spare shirt from the cupboard and left Kareemah a couple of rambling instructions. She summoned the elevator for them. In the cabin, they saw eye to red-rimmed eye for the first time today, and Pete was thankful that Chasten didn’t push away the hand he placed on his cheek. He just had to keep him from slipping away to his land of unbearable, unbearably fresh grief; one understanding gesture and tender word and pregnant silence at a time. 

They drove without a single stop until they had passed Traverse on the Interstate. It was a quiet trip, but Chasten had told him the basic facts he knew himself. Dustin and his wife Alyssa had saved up for a belated four-day honeymoon in California, the kids had stayed with Chasten’s parents -- their grandparents. Four and two years old, they weren’t of school-age yet.

  
For maybe the first time, Pete was glad he was an only child, he thought as he reached over the console to stroke a quietly whimpering Chasten’s hand next to him. He hadn’t known Dustin and Alyssa well, but at Christmas and Thanksgiving, she had been on the good side of overwhelming, and very blonde; and he had possessed a smirking, conspiratorial air that was usually found in men much older. And now they were -- what? Bits of raw flesh strewn between wreckage? Mobile snapshots their kids would pore over and try to grasp on memories?  
Inadvertently, he thought back to Afghanistan, and tried to recall the face of the Staff Sergeant whose kids had to see her return in a casket. He thought of the time he’d feared Chasten would suffer the same fate, and with him his own confidence in all that was good in the world. A shudder went down his spine. 

He felt his throat tighten as he pulled into the lot before Sherri and Terry’s house. They walked up the narrow landing hand in hand, a dawn settling behind them whose dusk, he couldn’t help thinking, some would not see. 

***

**April 10th, 2018, early morning hours**

**Just outside Traverse City, Michigan**

Chasten had heard these stairs creak for close to 18 years when one of his brothers -- _Dustin_ \-- snuck into the kitchen for a midnight snack or glass of water. So, his instinct was to turn right over on the threadbare mattress on the floor he shared with Peter after he had decided that the couch was too lonesome a place on a night like this. It had taken another bout of tears. 

  
But now, a little red-socked foot appeared in his field of vision, and another one. Elijah.  
The kids had been with Sherri’s friend Angie when the terrible news had broken. By the time they arrived home, they were so worn out they gave up questioning their grandparents for the reason everybody was here relatively soon.  
Elijah, who was about to turn five, had definitely noticed the somber faces and the tears in Sherri’s voice, though. He was a sensitive, wonder-filled child who sometimes reminded Chasten of himself at that age. 

Now Elijah was looming over Chasten, wearing his pajamas inside out and a bothered expression on his pointy-nosed face. 

“Uncle Cha-Cha,” he whispered, “Uncle Cha-Cha, are you awake?”  
Chasten swallowed. What was this about? Was he really the one to man those questions?  
“What’s up, Eli?” he responded, as innocuously as he could.  
Eli hunkered down, and put a delicate finger on Chastens face, and traced a trail from his cheekbone to his jaw, and looked at him incessantly with big and glazed-over eyes. Chasten shifted, but his nephew didn’t relent in his gaze. 

“You cried. Why is everybody sad today?” he asked, still staring. There it was.

Chasten hesitated for a long time, then decided to buy some more. They had planned to tell the kids tomorrow, when maybe -- _hopefully, out of necessity, it just couldn’t be that the dark cloud filling up his lungs and brain and every cavity in his body was here to stay_ \-- everybody was a little more adept at reining in their grief, if only for a short minute.  
“Hush, Eli, let’s try to not wake Uncle Pete,” he said, reaching for Eli’s hand. 

Too late. Next to them, Peter stirred and then sat up, his lashes fluttering, casting feathered shadows on his cheekbones. Gravelly from disuse when he asked the cause for the commotion, his voice was suddenly rapt when Chasten explained that Eli had a -- question. The word held charge, and Peter understood. The glance they exchanged was wary, an unspoken pact between soldiers on a do-or-die mission. Finally, Peter cleared his throat to ask Eli to settle between them, his scrawny back against Chasten’s stomach.

Chasten’s voice gave out.

  
  
In the end it was Peter who told Eli that Mom and Dad had had an accident on the plane, and that this was why grandma Sherri was crying. And that they loved Elijah and his baby sister Lily dearly. And that no, they weren’t coming back. He risked a look at Chasten when he said, not fighting anymore to keep his voice from trembling, “And it is okay to be, very, very sad about this.”  
  
Eli looked at Pete, in deep thought as only small children can be. For a few seconds, there was no sound but the Interstate zipping outside. When he finally laid back in Chasten’s lap and scrunched up his face and started to whimper, then wail, it was a catalyst Chasten hadn’t known he needed. He clutched at his orphaned nephew as his own tears started rolling again; a biblical flood of tears that streamed down his face, down the V-neck of his worn-out shirt and onto Peter’s cool, dry hand that was wrapped around his shoulder and rested on his chest. 

***

**June 16, 2018** **  
** **St. James Cathedral, South Bend, Indiana**

**  
** It was a 90 degree day outside. As the group had made their way from the sacristy to the church’s main entrance under the blaring sun, Pete had felt as if his dress shoes were leaving slight marks upon the almost-thawing asphalt. Thankfully, the single protester that sometimes greeted him on Sundays with his ratty denim vest and the hateful phrases on his sign was gone today.  
And now, he was sat next to Chasten on the pew inside, and felt the comforting weight of his hand on his own trembling thigh. If he concentrated, he could discern notes of the cologne he had bought him for Christmas beneath the wafts of incense. Tunnel vision.  
  


Time for another reading. It hadn’t taken much discussion to include one honoring the memory of Dustin and Alyssa, and they’d felt as if they owed it to them. In one of the anthologies he’d collected while in college, they had found a simple poem called “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver. Now Chasten’s cousin stood behind the lectern and let the words that left her lips expand until they filled up the entire nave: 

_Look, the trees_ _  
_ _are turning_ _  
_ _their own bodies_ _  
_ _into pillars_

  
The first weeks had been rough, very rough. Chasten had driven up to his mother and father every weekend to help clean out Dustin’s house, and to make sure Sherri contorted her grief-stricken features into something resembling a smile from time to time. She had ceased to tint her hair that ink-black color after Dustin’s death, and the strands that had just now begun to frame her face were of a dirty gray.

_of light,_ _  
_ _and giving off the rich_ _  
_ _fragrance of cinnamon_ _  
_ _and fulfillment_

Three days after the crash, while they were all huddled in the undertaker’s lounge and making tense small talk about the candles, Rhyan’s wife, Judy, a nimble-tongued woman with darting eyes, had made a comment that made the fragile house of cards of their family’s dynamic implode instantaneously. Her tone saccharine and pious, she’d implied that every death made sense in the big picture God painted. And that marrying and taking a honeymoon while already raising two kids hadn’t been according to His plan. 

_the long tapers_ _  
_ _of cattails  
_ _are bursting and floating away over  
_ _the blue shoulders_

To Pete’s stunned surprise, Rhyan refused to disavow this. Dustin’s absence as the facilitator he’d always been loomed large. Rhyan and Chasten went off like dynamite. Insults were thrown until Rhyan called Chasten, maybe inevitably so, a faggot to his face. Pete remembered the look in his eyes as it dawned on him what bridge he’d just crossed. And he remembered Chasten cringing like he’d been hit by a fist punch, as years and years of hurt returned.

_of the ponds,  
_ _and every pond,  
_ _no matter what its name is, is_ _  
_ _nameless now._

Later, when they were sitting in the back row of the Studebaker to the Pride block party, Pete could still get his lips to tingle just thinking of their kiss during the ceremony. It was a kiss that felt defiant in these circumstances -- and it really shouldn’t.  
He leaned further into the crook of his husbands -- _his husband’s_ \-- arm, and breathed in the warmth, the homeyness, that he exuded. His voice took on an earnest tinge he refused to be ashamed of. “I can already tell marrying you is the best decision I’ve ever made.”  
Chasten’s cheeks flushed to a pretty pink, and Pete could tell he bit his tongue before he kissed him softly on the lips, replying, “Don’t tell that to the Smart Sewer people, babe.”

At the reception, the third dance he shared was with baby Lily. Chasten and he had danced the way they only danced when nobody was watching, at 10pm between the kitchen and the living room, swaying softly in whatever rhythm Chasten fell into.  
Then, his mother -- had she always felt so fragile? Still, her eyes had the same light they’d had the day he’d come out and she’d asked if there was anybody.

But, moving his weight from his right to his left foot and shifting Lily in her light blue dress back up on his hip, he felt a special kind of tug around his stomach. A sweet ache that only intensified when she gave him a pearly-toothed smile and grasped at his boutonniere, her brown eyes widening with awe.

Swallowing, he glanced over to the stage to look for Chasten. There he was, cowered down to Eli’s height, listening intently. Right in that moment, Eli must have made one of his observations, because Chasten threw back his head in laughter and let his dimples flash. 

For a moment, Pete saw it crystal-clear. The two of them, decorating the nursery their guest room had been turned into. Chasten at the parent-teacher conference, for once not the one behind the desk. Excursions to the library and the museum, and first-day-of-school-antsiness. Graduations.

It wasn’t an impossible future. Not at all. After their parents’ death, Lily and Elijah had stayed in Traverse with their grandparents, since Dustin and Alyssa hadn’t left a will and Rhyan, after the fiasco at the undertaker’s, was not an option. Nonetheless, it was really Chasten who made them come out of their shells. Lily had lost a chunk of her vocabulary since April, which was to expect, according to the child psychologist they had consulted. Elijah tended to shut himself off.  
But for hours on end, Chasten sat on the floor with them, cross-legged. He helped Lily sound out the fruits in the picture book, and summoned Pete to tell Elijah -- who had celebrated his fifth birthday in May -- tales about a place called Malta. Most times they left for South Bend again, the kids were inconsolable. 

Across the room, Pete’s gaze met Chasten’s, and he nodded slightly.

***

  
**April 13, 2019** **  
** **South Bend, Indiana**

Chasten closed the door to the nursery with a low thud. It was Saturday. Tomorrow, Peter would announce for President. Today, Chasten had tried his best to tire out the kids -- by decorating the house for Easter together, and by letting them hold the leash as they walked the dogs -- so the two of them would have the evening to themselves. A rare occurrence these days, and one Chasten sorely missed. 

Downstairs, Peter, who had spent the day with Lis and Mike finishing off the preparations, was already waiting. The smile he was wearing softened his features, but in the light of the candle he’d lit on the counter, his eyes still glistened like honed gemstones. He had poured them two glasses of the good wine, and stood up as Chasten stepped into the living room, softly as not to make the floorboard creak. 

“Good evening, love.”  
Chasten smiled to himself. If Peter couldn’t keep his bedroom voice to himself even now, it would surely be the right kind of night. He stepped into Peter’s extended arms, breathing him in and fastening his hands around the small of his back. “What did I do to earn this royal treatment, baby?” he teased, “Candles? Wine?”  
Peter shook his head affectionately. “Always looking for a compliment, aren’t we?”, he deadpanned, dark eyes already fixed on Chasten’s lips.

Chasten took the bait. “You know it’s not the only thing I’m looking for tonight” he breathed, and went in for a kiss that didn’t take long to turn hungry and searching. 

Wine and candles forgotten, it took only moments for them to start fumbling with each other’s shirt and belt. Chasten slipped his hand into the back pockets of Peter’s jeans, teeth clashing, and dug his fingers into the tautness of his ass to elicit that little, that exquisite, hitching moan he could drink up as if his life depended on it. Peter moved against him, and the part of Chasten’s brain that wasn’t foggy with arousal noted, bemusedly, that he was already getting hard. Withdrawing for a second just to see the way it made his husband stiffen, he said, “What if we take this upstairs?” 

After they were both spent and giddy with post-coital bliss, they lay in bed, their naked limbs entangled. Lazily, Peter turned to Chasten, kissing the last trace of himself off him, his stubble sweetly chafing at the sore skin of his lips. 

“You know,” Peter said, suddenly serious, “I sometimes feel bad for enjoying life so thoroughly with you. I mean, with everything that has happened over the last year, I --”

Chasten nodded, and continued using his thumbs to draw patterns on Peter’s bare chest that was still covered with the thinnest film of sweat. 

Peter started off again, thoughtful in his tone. “I mean, we have nothing to feel guilty about. You don’t, at least. I do maybe, what with the amount of time I’m on the road and whatnot --”. He ignored Chasten’s movements gaining ever so slightly in force in quiet repudiation of this sentiment, and went on, “and I guess Dad and Dustin and Alyssa would have wanted us to be happy, but still …”. His voice fizzled out.  
  


Raising his torso so his face was hovering over Peter’s, Chasten took a deep breath. They had discussed this. As firmly as he had it in him, he stated, “Happy uncles raise happy kids, Peter. And happy warrior candidacies are worthwhile. And if I have learned anything in life, it’s -- it is that feeling guilty for having the emotions that you have is never the way forward.”

The room was almost completely dark, but the smile that cracked on Peter’s face was sunrise. “How did I deserve such a wise husband?” he breathed, and Chasten kissed him one last time. 

“Let’s go to bed, babe. Hell of a day tomorrow.”

Chasten listened as Peter’s breathing slowed down, steady and even, while his thoughts wandered to the day that awaited them.  
In the morning, Peter would go to church, and Chasten -- after changing the sheets -- would let the children build a pillow fortress on the big bed and make breakfast for their uncles like they always did on weekends. Afterwards, they would go to the venue, where his brilliant, brave, amazing husband would go give a rousing speech. And then, Chasten and the kids would come onstage, and they’d be the family Chasten didn’t allow himself to imagine mere years ago.  
He thought of their mothers. One had lost her son this past year, the other one her husband. But recently, chatting with the kids, they both seemed to relearn their smiles. Granted, they were fraught and maybe brittle smiles, but smiles nonetheless.

With that thought slowly fading from his mind, Chasten drifted off.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank all of you for reading; and special thanks to @pockettreatpete, who I assaulted on Twitter so she'd beta me. 
> 
> * Technically, they didn't adopt Buddy until much later, so let's go with artistic license as an excuse. 
> 
> * If anybody is interested in the full poem by the amazing Mary Oliver, it can be found at https://wordsfortheyear.com/2014/03/28/in-blackwater-woods-by-mary-oliver/
> 
> All the best from halfway 'round the world!


End file.
